Sunday, January 15, 2017

Not really sure where to start your story?

Good morning!

I'm sorry about not posting every day. My goal was to, but to be honest, it's been a little difficult over the past week or so to keep up that pace. Hopefully, though, I'll be able to be back to normal daily postings. In the meantime, I'll post a few times a week at the very least. Sorry again for the inconvenience.

Today's topic.. we're gonna keep within romances. I've been asked and have read countless times about writers not knowing exactly where to start their story. It's a tricky question because without actually reading what a person has written it's hard to pinpoint. So, I'm gonna play it safe with a reply to this question.

When in doubt, start with an action scene, or as close to an action scene as you can. You want to introduce at least one of your characters as quickly as possible. Have them doing something.. exciting, mysterious, etc. Then go from there. In my wip's I try my very best to jump right in a scene/chapter, usually using my heroine, and about half way through I'll start writing my hero's pov.. but before then, I've placed my hero on good ground as well. I'm not just talking about 'here he is, this is him'. The way I try to write a chapter, is I try to do half of a chap from the heroine's pov, and the other is the hero's pov.

Now, I'm not suggesting you count the pages of a chapter and cut it in half and use one for each of your main characters, though you can if you want because it's your story. What I'm saying, I hope, is that when you're introducing your characters, it has to feel real, natural, so it's not about how many pages you write using a certain point of view. It's about how the character's interact within the scene you're writing.

Saying this though, try your best not to head-hop. You can have both your main's on the same page, or several pages in, just try to stick to using one point of view and then switch to the other, after you've finished with that particular part in the story.

Hope this helps :)   Happy Writing!

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